


Degeneration

by roughlycut



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Transformation, implied McReyes, implied r76
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 10:19:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14692167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roughlycut/pseuds/roughlycut
Summary: He recalls the black smoke, how it had seeped from his body, like the first time he went to see her. The headaches had been intense back then. Unshootable.He’d been desperate, so desperate.





	Degeneration

He’s not sure how much time has passed. It’s not that he’s forgotten, no. It’s more that he doesn’t care. Not anymore.

 

In the beginning it had mattered, how many days. Hours. Seconds.

 

He had reminisced, remembering the final hours before the explosion. The now so unfamiliar warmth of happiness filling his body just minutes prior. There had been a meeting, people gathered. He’d watched their faces, the smiles and the gentle greetings. A nod in his direction.

 

Had it even been real? He wasn’t sure anymore, not trusting himself or his memories. But still he had counted, kept track. Tried to stay in touch with the parts of him that felt more human than the rest. The parts that cared.

 

But he didn't care anymore.

 

All he wanted now was to disappear.

 

To forget.

 

An impossible task, he had learned.

 

The first time he’d bit the bullet and survived, it was like the thin walls keeping everything inside of him from merging, crumbled. Nothing keeping the black bile deep in his chest from mutating, spreading through his veins, filling out every part of him. He’d turned an ashy grey, unsure if he was hallucinating, screaming in agony as the black bile burned with intensity.

 

And then he’d gone numb.

 

He recalls the black smoke, how it had seeped from his body, like the first time he went to see her. The headaches had been intense back then. Unshootable.

 

He’d been desperate, so desperate.

 

What had she done?

 

What had he done?

 

At this point it didn’t really matter. So many things had lost their meaning. He ate because he had to. He drank because he had to. He carried on because he didn’t know what else to do. He’d had some kind of purpose, in the beginning, when he left.

 

When he fled.

 

When he escaped.

 

After the explosion.

 

He tries to remember, but it’s like it happened decades ago.

 

Like it didn’t happen to him.

 

The commander of Blackwatch.

 

_ Gabriel Reyes _ .

 

The name tastes foreign on his tongue.

 

The first few days after the walls had crumbled, he’d said it often. Repeated it over and over and over again, afraid he’d forget who he was. A mantra keeping him grounded in a world he no longer wanted to be in.

 

All he really wants now is to forget.

 

Forget about the meeting, the warm smiles and the hand in his just hours prior.

 

Forget about the nagging voice in the back of his head telling him something was wrong, wrong, wrong. Everything looked too bright, too good.

 

Forget about his family, his life, himself, his name punched on his dog tags that he still carried like a weight around his neck.

 

He clutches them hard in his hand at night, when he can, when they don’t disappear through his translucent skin and the black smoke that follows. He wants to forget his name, who he is, who he was to someone.

 

Jack.

 

Jack wearing his dog tags back in SEP, the dim light catching on them as they lay against his chest.

 

He wants to forget, but the memories spiral deeper and deeper, further away from the warm happiness he had felt just before everything was too loud, far too loud. Like a rumble from underneath him, the concrete floors cracking open like eggshells.

 

Bright orange, like a sunset, almost blinding in the morning as it reflects off the windows of the skyscrapers surrounding him now. He knows where he is, can’t forget the way those buildings look, how much they remind him of home. Even in the dark he knows this is home.

 

But it’s a place he doesn’t have anymore. Doesn’t have the right to have anymore.

 

He clutches his fingers around his dog tags harder, feels the thin ball chain dig into the still solid palm of his hand. Remembers how it dug into his neck in the scorching heat of the desert, Jesse’s hand curled around the chain, yanking it. Brought his head close, too close, in a bruising kiss.

 

A farewell kiss.

 

The taste of cigarillos almost palpable on his tongue now as he cries, watching everything slip through his fingers. Did Jesse know?

 

He loses himself for hours like that, adrift in memories he isn’t even sure is his anymore.

 

Later he comes to, nothing but just a shadow of himself, staring at his slowly evaporating hand, chain sliding through it in painful slow-motion.

 

And he reaches out to catch it before it hits the muddy ground, body and mind aching to hold on, to have something solid.

 

But there is nothing substantial left.

 

No hand. No body.

 

No Gabriel Reyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for The Reaper Zine.


End file.
